Jonathan Opitz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is a project architect at Little Rock’s AMR Architects. He is a board member for studioMain, the Architecture Design Network, and the American Institute of Architects Arkansas Chapter. He is the current chairman for the AIA Arkansas Central Section, the AIA Arkansas Sustainability Committee, the AIA Arkansas Convention Speaker and is also its Leadership Greater Little Rock Class XXVIII representative.

Jeff Shannon, FAIA, has devoted most of his career to practicing and teaching architecture in his native Arkansas. Educated at the University of Arkansas and at Rice University, he was dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at Arkansas from 2000 to 2013.

Sheila Dial-Barton is an Associate at EOA Architects. Price Harrison founded Price Harrison Architect and Associates PLLC in 1998. And Kem G. Hinton is a founding partner at Tuck-Hinton Architects. All three of this year's judges hail from Nashville, Tennessee.

A new Residence Life and Student Center lifts expectations through innovation and clarity of vision in keeping with ASMSA’s exemplary mission. Arkansas Tech doubles the seating capacity of Chambers Cafeteria on a 5-month timetable, within budget. And the Trailhead Complex at the Maumelle Nature Center is conceived as an exhibit landscape that curates visitors’ passage through unique ecological facilities, landscapes, and architectural structures.

The Courtyard House is a pre-fabricated, single-family residence, designed and built in Fayetteville by UA students and then installed in the South Main neighborhood of downtown Little Rock. The first phase of the new Fayetteville High School houses new administration, cafeteria, performing arts and athletic facilities. North Presbyterian Church transforms an industrial warehouse into a multi-purpose worship space for an urban congregation that serves the homeless and needy in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation has found a new home in an old building at 315 Mountain. A modest ranch-style home at 560 Vinson is expanded atop Mt. Sequoyah in Fayetteville. Hunt Chapel is a stone, wood, and glass chapel. And the addition and renovation to the Fay Jones School of Architecture in Vol Walker Hall at the University of Arkansas is a complex but resolute hybrid of a beautifully restored historical building and a modern addition and insertion.

It is an honor as president of AIA Arkansas for 2014 to present to you this year’s AIA Design Awards, highlighting our chapter’s prestigious Design Awards Program as well as individual recipients of our Chapter Awards.

Since joining MAHG, Travis R. Bartlett has served as the project architect on many of the firm’s largest projects, and has in this capacity been responsible for the coordination and scheduling of large design teams consisting of numerous specialty engineering and design consultants.

Currently, as director of the Architecture and Design Network, June Biber Freeman oversees a series of free, public lectures by architects and design professionals. Now in its tenth season, the program she conceived and has run as a volunteer is supported in part by the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Arkansas Arts Center.

James Meyer, Assoc. AIA, is a project designer at WER Architects in Little Rock. He is also a founding member of studioMAIN, a board member of the Architecture + Design Network, the Associate Director of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the rising Regional Associate Director for the Gulf States Region of the American Institute of Architects.

Containers are not just for storage anymore. A portable storage company needed a new corporate facility. An office building and shop structure was built using repurposed shipping containers in the design. This approach was both cost-efficient and environmentally friendly.